The weepy has been ongoing, lo these several days. Mayhap reading Heather Lende’s If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name this particular week was not the best of ideas. The fault does not lie with the book; it is charming and warm and lovely and makes me want to go live in Alaska (even with all the hunting and death and scary small plane rides). No, the problem is with me. I am sappy at the least hormonal of times.

I submit to you an incident from July 4th. We were having friends over for a casual cookout. Don, prior to making the beer run, noted that the carport was looking seriously ramshackle. “We should just tear it down.”

Sane, rational Kel would have agreed. The carport is sagging and mossy and serves no purpose save sheltering the bird’s nest just above the outbuilding’s west window. Enter emotional irrational Kel. “But you can’t do it until Fall because Mama is still raising her babies but wait then she won’t have a place to come back to even though we know for sure that she’s used this nest the past two seasons so just wait until the babies have flown at least all right?”

Don, lovely and practical and patient, replied, “She’s a bird. We live in the woods.”

To which I responded, shrilly, “Can’t I just have a menstrual moment?”

And with that, Don went on the beer run. Wise move; I wasn’t so much into the ‘being reasonable’ thing. I went into our tiny bathroom, sat on the edge of the tall tub and cried.

When Don returned, he was positively cheerful. “Because I upset my bride, I’m making it up to her.” He proudly displayed the beers he had chosen: the animal themed Brown Dog Ale and the hoppy but rather yummy Hurricane Kitty IPA. As a bonus, he’d picked up Old Heathen Stout. Score for my husband.

The rest of the 4th was delightful. Good food, of which I ate an appalling amount, and good fun. Run For Your Life, Candyman was a hoot. I’m not much of a game player, but this was a blast. Playing with real gingerbread men that you could nibble away at as they met their doom made it that much better.

Work this week, in a word: trying. There were a few wonderful customers who made it a bit better, but mostly it was grim. Yesterday’s high point was cutting my shoulder on the steel dumpster door. Long story short: I’m an idiot. I’ve been at this store for five years. I ought to know the vagaries of the dumpster door. You’d think I might have anticipated that if I dropped a box of stripped MMs and bent to pick it up that the door would swing back and that standing up full force with said box would slam me right into the sharp steel corner of that door. The abrasion itself is not so bad, but I’ve got a splendid deep muscle bruise that should make jousting and fighting and wearing a bodice a whole heap of fun!

And, as luck would have it, I’m going to spend this weekend jousting and fighting and wearing a bodice.

I’m too moody to talk about the gig. I’ll tell y’all about it when I return. In the meantime, should you want to send happy safe-jousting thoughts my way, I’d be most grateful.

I swear, late at night, dyslexia sets in. And it's not even that late now.

My brain kept turning "carport" into "carpet" and I had to re-read the section, scratching my head as I was wondering how birds had gotten into your carpet to nest, and why your carpet would look saggy or mossy.